Bossobass Dave

Yes, the DVD is what I normally use for action flicks with good low end because I rent before buying and want to get the draphs up ASAP for others to see them. Now, I'm thinking I should just graph the BR versions. I bought the package set for TAS that has both BR and DVD. I just graphed the last scene using both and there's 8-10dB difference at-a-glance. Everything was kept exactly identical; mic position, interface setting, AVR calibration, curve selection and amp setting. The system is calibrated flat and MVL at '0'. The DVD is DD and Dialnorm is -1. The BR is DTS HD-Master Audio. I'm going to nick both digitally, level match them and have a listen full range. Personally, I'm a conspiracy nut, so I see this as a scheme to get people to see the better picture, better sound push toward BR (as if the ads that say as much on every DVD isn't enough). They come together in a package, but I suspect DVD will be phased out and this is one part of the marketing for the transition. Either way, there is no doubt that I'm seeing a trend here of the DVD having a good bit less overall level, and it's bugging me big time. I have no doubt this is part of the "WOW, that movie has BASS!" from one person (who watched the BR version) and "Meh, it was a little weak, IMO." from the next person. It probably ramped up the subjective vs graphs debate that led us all here.

Updated TR. Had to change a scene (forgot to change the SL cap in it) and I added a scene. I plan to buy the BR and check if the levels are higher. I suspect they are.

For those who missed it because the page turned, Total Recall is UP on the previous page... I noticed the same thing with TAS as I've experienced with Thor (and now I suspect several others that I just didn't notice because too much time went between viewings). The BR is much hotter than the rented DVD, When I played the final scene, my amp momentarily clipped. I rechecked FR and levels and that wasn't it. The ST is just way hotter. Here's the 2 scenes, the one I originally did off the DVD and the BR version: I'll switch them in the Doc, but I usually rent before buying and the good ones get run off the rental disc for expediency. I wonder what the deal is here, are they goosing the ST level for BR discs of blockbusters so that "louder is perceived as better" helps to make people think it's worth it to go BR? I also decided the subway scene has pretty awesome low end, so I'll be adding that to the Doc as well. BTW, I can only update the TAS I originally posted (already done), not the one linked to.

Total Recall

Matrix Trilogy Docs are updated. Although I agree that Matrix II and III are long winded, I disagree with the rent recommendation. These films revolutionized visual effects and were soon copied by everyone, including TV commercial ads. As well, they showed a much appreciated evolution in sound design, which, thanks to Max, can be seen in the animation below. Like the Bible rip-off or not, I think this Trilogy is as much a must own as any other franchise in moviedom.

The charts are easy enough to change, so if you see anything amiss, I very much appreciate your input. Also, just so you know, I would be absolutely elated to post your name on one of these data summaries and avidly promote your work, so please make sure we all get a heads up anytime you have a hand in the process, regardless of what type of movie it may be.

Posted the Matrix trilogy and reposted TDKR. I've made my albums private and AVS mods have added a copyright disclaimer to their upload feature. At the very least it has sent a message to [that type of person]. That would never have been the case if folks didn't voice their objections to the blatant theft and abuse of the material that's exclusive to this thread. Sorry to disagree with you on these 2 issues Max, but I'm resolute. I'll complain forever and often about other forums nicking our work to post elsewhere, in particular the stuff that has just hit the streets and that no one else has for the moment, and about soundtracks that bite the cheese. Writing your Congressman is a waste of time, but many people will read this thread in the future. Loudness wars and filters to accommodate that will get the 2 thumbs down award and a lotta bellyaching from me. As long as I post, those 2 items will remain on the table. Total Recall comes out next Tuesday. Here's hoping it has good everything, especially sound.

Todd AO used to, until they switched to ported subs. This is from Keith Yates' Way Down Deep series of sub tests: I agree that sound transmission is frequency dependent, but only when looking at the 20-20k Hz bandwidth. I'm talking about the subwoofer bandwidth only where the entire bandwidth will bleed within a much narrower parameter. I've tested this at my house with people standing outside and trust me, it isn't the ULF that causes them to say they hear the subs via transmission. I've been collecting posted in-room response graphs for a long time and I've found no evidence to support the notion that so-called PVG begins at a room size dependent frequency. In any case, there's little chance a 200 foot sound wave can be prevented from reflecting off the boundaries at the speed of sound and avoid the boundary gain phenomenon in any room. Members of HTS and AVS tend to live in a bubble. The real world of high end home theater is not at all ignorant to content or its playback and room sizes are typically in the 7k cubes and up area. Here's a clip I saved that I found while enjoying Keith Yates' design/installations: This ^^^ was from an article about a custom HT installation Yates did in... ready?... 1997. Yates has had Danley, Seaton and others design and build subs to his app goals and none of them were trivial and all of them provided reproduction to below 10 Hz. Thigpen is another example of hardware that's been available for some time where the room size isn't going to be an issue. Finally, IBers like FOH have come upon the basic physics, design, hardware sources and installation methods, done some homework and built the simplest of systems on-the-cheap in short order. IOW, I don't buy the cost excuse, I never bought the difficulty excuse and I don't buy the room's too big excuse. Industries tend to do what everyone else does. Companies like Harmon dominate and always have in my experience in studios (which goes back quite a ways). If you don't see JBL in the studio, you see a clone of JBL. Again, just my 2 cents.

FWIW, FM; thanks for the input and the offer of help regarding who mixed what. As I said earlier, I use IMDb for info and, under Sound Department, I did not know that the proper job description for who mixed the FX is "sound re-recording mixer'. Now that I have some more experience in searching, I have it right, but, as you said, there is often more than one person with that title, so I certainly appreciate the offer to help out with accurate info in that regard. BLEED: This is a subject that, like most others in the field of the subwoofer bandwidth, gets stated as a fact with no debate. Funny thing is that the same folks who say ULF bleed is a problem for commercial cinemas then usually go on to say that ULF is inaudible. That's like saying "The odor of carbon dioxide is a big problem. BTW, carbon dioxide is odorless." I don't believe anyone has ever investigated ULF bleed in a commercial theater except on paper. At least, I've never been able to find anything on the subject that leads me to believe ULF bleed was a confirmed problem. Transmission losses are easily and accurately calculated according to floor, wall and ceiling construction and those losses are not frequency-dependent. MKT has the same room gain profile in his concrete bunker as my wood framed, open to the rest of the house space. The difference is transmission losses. His room is >20 times less lossy than mine. That has nothing to do with ULF vs 20 Hz and everything to do with construction method. RARITY OF ULF CAPABILITY: You take a subwoofer driver, put it in a box (a la Acoustic Research, circa: 60 years ago) or mount it in a wall (a la Bozak, circa: 60 years ago), feed it signal and you have ULF capability. The cost is not incurred in the subwoofer system. Rather, it resides in the signal chain fidelity. SPL is simply a function of adding drivers until your goal is reached. A quick visit to the cult of the infinitely baffled forums will confirm how inexpensive and efficient it is to have the displacement. A sealed system is a 2nd order high pass system. It's corner frequency and Q can easily be totally controlled. Of course, if the input signal is rolled off at 20 Hz, the system will accordingly be distorted. Displacement is available today for $40/Liter and amplification for 6 cents/watt, so cash outlay is not the problem. And, it certainly has little to do with "expertise", so the 'engineers' who get all offended by the mere mention of elegance seem to me to be more profit-minded and less sound engineer-minded. I don't know, but I don't care much either. Facts are facts. It's a simple matter to prove my assertions. I've been doing it for over a decade. There are only 3 reasons a sealed system won't reproduce ULF; 1) the system is HPF'd, 2) the input signal feeding the system is HPF'd and 3) the measurement system isn't accurately showing the response. This apparently universal misunderstanding of the basic function of a sealed system in an enclosed space is so prevalent that it's more likely to read someone commenting on his posted measurements with "As you can see in the posted graph, my room has no room gain below X Hz" than it is to read "As you can see in my posted graph, my signal chain nearly completely negates room gain in my system". Every room is 1/16 space. That's an indisputable fact. If the boundaries are made of cardboard, the 1/16 space reinforcement will all but disappear. If the boundaries are made of mortar-filled concrete block, the 1/16 space reinforcement will be +6dB per boundary. If the input signal is rolled off at 20 Hz, the 1/16 space reinforcement <20 Hz will be zero. I've said the above so many times over the years that there are old-timers in the forums who yawn, roll eyes and say "Here it comes, the frequency response Nazi is playing his broken record again". Just this week in the DIY forum at AVS, a fella said "No source has any content below 5 (or 7 Hz, or whatever... I forget his particular per frequency) Hz and never will." What should I do, just keep reading on as though someone didn't just say gravity doesn't exist? [Please see the SL graph of the WOTW plane crash scene] Just my 2 cents. I don't so much enjoy debate anymore because I've grown weary of being the target of abuse from hurt feelings, professional pride, conventional wisdom, people who just wanna sell stuff who have the 'go away kid, ya bother me' attitude and other irrelevant biases. I had this problem with FM and it pains me to have to go through that for just sticking to basic facts. Hey man, you work the knob twirl desk at Todd AO. That's pretty freakin' awesome in my book. What I say about subwoofers has no bearing on how I feel about that in any way. If you got a contrary impression, please strike it from the record.

Due respect Doc, but this isn't my vocation, just recreation. Only the insane would engage in recreation that aggravates them. This BS argument that everything below 20 Hz (or whatever arbitrary and incorrect Hz the arguer pulls out of his ass) is 'unintended artifact', 'left on the ST by mistake since the knob jockeys couldn't monitor it', 'inaudible, so unnecessary', 'less than 1% of 1%...', etc., ad-infinitum, has been around since I first registered to a forum 12 years ago. The only reason it could possibly still exist is that it's agenda-driven. All this time I've participated in those ridiculous debates because it had the benefit of possibly allowing some people to reason that playback fidelity vs a grossly distorted playback that included lopping off 3 octaves of content might be of some benefit. When RMK posted in the AVS thread that, basically, I only post about ULF as some sort of "guerilla marketing campaign" to sell subwoofers with that feature, it really became the last straw for me. That was as libelous a statement as it gets. That crosses the line from debate to tortious behavior. Then someone I don't even know lifts my graphs and posts about how they're flawed, inaccurate, blah, blah. You say just let them do it? Sorry, I can't and that's just bad advice. What if one of your patients went online and told an audience of a few hundred thousand that you treated him incompetently and that you only were in it for the money? And, yes, I believe they indeed have won. I believe that will be reflected in future STs that will follow the same path the music industry and pro sound industry went down, to the same end. The trend is already evident. Dynamic range falls by -5dB, then watch it shrink from there as the bandwidth grows closer and closer to the pro sound industry standard of 40 Hz with hardware specs that claim 30 Hz. Bandwidth is irrelevant. It's how loud it goes. Louder is better. If a HPF allows for louder then don't bet against the HPF. Someone ping me to discuss saving the data I have in Photobucket because I don't plan to leave it there for any length of time, if that's something anyone cares to do.

The moron nicked my graphs and posted them at AVS right after he said you and I are doing a lot of work for nothing because no one cares what the graphs say. That's a problem for me. I'm not doing all that work for some shitwipe to lift it and post it elsewhere with the same BS critique that caused my exit from AVS. I wiped TDKR from my photobucket account to verify that he lifted the graphs and didn't just take the links. I need a solution to this problem. I prefer to just let AVS do it's thing and not be any part of it, especially not through some mental patient without my direct input. This project just isn't that important to me that I should feel any discomfort over it at anyone's expense. I've had enough of that nonsense over the past 10 years. It just holds no interest for me.

Star Wars: Attack Of The Clones

If either JPC or Gary J show up here, I'll stop posting the data and spend all of my spare time goofing on them. It's a lot less work and far more fun.

Title Block corrected. Thanks for the heads up. For clarification, it's Gregg Landaker.

I always capture the best scenes as I see them while watching the movie. Max's graph will show the general trend, whereas my caps will; show the highlights. For those who see color below 30 Hz and wonder why we say the ST is filtered, here's a slowed scroll speed to capture more "action" on a single graph. A HPF does not shut the sound off at 30 Hz as in a brick wall filter. It attenuates everything below 30 Hz at a rate equal to the order of the filter (6dB/octave, 12dB/octave, 24dB/octave, etc.), and this graph clearly shows a 4th order attenuation (24dB/octave, or -24dB from 30 Hz to 15 Hz) starting at 30 Hz:

The Dark Knight Rises

Not even close from where I sit. When the ship explodes in AOTC, it's a closer match, but neither part of the AOTC scene matches the loudness of The Bat:

Sound design was done by Richard King. He also has SD credit for WOTW, Dark Knight and Master & Commander, which gave me the impression that it couldn't have been filtered by the designer. But, he also did Inception, Thor and this one, all 3 of which have a small taste of ULF and all 3 having been goosed (IMO) in level at the expense of ULF, as Josh suggests (and I tend to agree with him on that). All things considered, I believe the filtering has to have been done during the mix process. I also believe it's done to allow headroom to make a scene "louder". If I imagine mixing through a system that rolls off at 30 Hzish and the 0dBFS alarm goes off or the sound auto-mutes when I boost the low end, I might say "Try a 20 Hz HPF and if that doesn't do it, try 30 Hz". If that lets me boost the scene and I couldn't hear anything below that on the system I'm doing playback through, I might just say "Let the filter ride". The scene with ULF shows no taxing in the waveform graph, but the filtered scenes (like when The Bat first takes flight) shows quite a lot stronger waveform. It's very plausible to me that adding the HPF allowed for that huge burst and it's just as plausible that if there was <20 Hz content in that sound effect it would have limited the allowable level in the audible range. Yes, this is a very disturbing trend to me. If this sacrificing the fidelity of the sound design to allow for a "louder" mix continues (Battleship is HPF'd at 40 Hz), we won't even need subwoofers. More importantly, all action flick sound tracks will end up sounding exactly the same, compressed, loud as hell and fake. It'll become like the music business, like a Britney Spears CD through a boom box vs Telarc's 1812 Overture through a full BW system.

It's the BR from the triple disc set, bought today in anticipation of a great low end soundtrack. The movie is agonizingly long and not worth the buy, IMO. I took a calculated risk based on previous Batman films and lost. I'll be sailing it out the window after doing the doc on it, so anyone interested can stand under the dormer window of my HT with a catcher's mitt. I'll check the DVD once I have the BR (DTS-HD MA) doc done.

Exclusive preview... Dark Knight Rises: There is one scene in this movie with effects that aren't filtered: The rest of this film, including The Bat flying machine, is FAT (Filtered At Thirty), as in 30 Hz: I didn't have the gumption after seeing this Avengers soundtrack pasted onto the much awaited DK Rises, so you'll have to wait for the full report, but there you have it. Another great film neutered by unknown person or persons...

Max, will update when you post the data as I read you have HTTYD. This is one of my favorites and that last cap where the Red Death dragon crashes into the ground never ceases to amaze me. DAY-Ummm Look at the variety of effects RT created for this one and the way the effects build to the climax throughout the movie. Simply awesome. It seems Rizzo has mixed many of the movies RT has designed the sound for, and has has one impressive list of MWB. This one was a pleasure to doc.

HTTYD:

Hey guys, Had to share this with y'all; MIB 3. Sheeeesh. Don't bring your subwoofers to this one. I had to check if mine were on. Reference level at the LP, subs (+/-) 3dB 4-100 Hz: Introducing; the Bass Thumbs Down Award:

The results others have had who have W7 64 bit have been iffy at best. Since I don't use W except to measure, I'm not familiar enough with their glitchy OS (don't know how you W guys stand it) to field the e-mails, so I just say it may not work, which is true thus far. If you can give me a link to a workaround, specific to W7/64Bit/SpecLab, I'll gladly add that to the site. There are some things you may have to tweak to get the graphs just right, so if you do set it up, ping me with a sample graph and I can tell you what to tweak, if necessary. Yes, I would love the help!!! I have a template, so I will need: Screen caps. (Generally, 3 caps/film, 4 or 5 if the film is loaded with scenes, 5 maximum. A pic of the beginning of the scene and end of the scene. Time stamp of the beginning & end of the scene. Film cover art pic. Sound designer info. Re-recording mixer info. Max's PvA graph. Max's ratings. For title block info, I use: IMDb. Just google the film title with IMDB after it and the link should be at the top of page 1. The site will have the film photo, just drag it onto your desktop. Then, under it will be a link to "see full cast & crew" which will take you to a list of everyone involved. Scroll down to "Sound Department". Find the sound designer, click on his/her name and list other films they've done the SD for. Go back to sound department and look for re-recording mixer, click on the name and find films they've mixed as well. E-mail Max's stuff, the SCs, pics and title block info to me and I'll drop them into the template and post them. PNG, PDF or JPEG is fine for the SCs and pics. If I have the film or if I rent the film, I have it nailed, but there are a lot of titles I don't own and don't want to rent or just don't have the time to get to, so help would be awesome for those titles (which will eventually be any I haven't done that Max has already PvA graphed and rated).

WOTT and ALVH are updated.